Daniel Pink explains why handwritten notes beat laptop notes. Handwriting forces you to summarize instead of transcribe verbatim, which improves recall immediately and two weeks later. Use pencil and paper.
Hi everyone. Welcome to another PinkCast. You know, I'm a chronic note-taker. I take notes all the time, wherever I am. And I've often wondered, should I be taking notes using my trusty laptop computer, or should I instead be taking notes the old-fashioned way, with a pencil and paper? Well, I now have the answer. It comes from the science. And it's super clear, and the answer is this: where possible, take notes by hand, the old-fashioned way. Why? When we take notes using a laptop computer, our tendency is to transcribe, to take down verbatim what people are saying. But when we use this kind of technology, we can't write as fast as most people can talk, so we can't transcribe. What do we do instead? Here's the key: we summarize, we synthesize, we recap, we put things into our own words, and that's the magic. So when scholars have looked at this battle between laptop note-taking and old-fashioned note-taking, old-fashioned note-taking wins. It makes it easier for people to retrieve the information immediately after an encounter, and— this is pretty interesting— when people go back to their notes 2 weeks later, pencil and paper notes are better Because you've done a better job of synthesizing and summarizing the main ideas. So, if you are a note-taker, as am I, put aside that laptop, sharpen that pencil, and you'll be good to go. Thanks for watching The Pinkcast.
